Climate Change Funding: AfDB, UK Government To The Rescue
The Africa Climate Change Fund (ACCF or Fund) is a multi-donor trust fund well positioned to contribute to the achievement of the African Development Bank (AfDB)’s goal to triple its climate financing efforts and foster its drive for a climate-resilient Africa.
The AfDB established the ACCF in April 2014 with an initial contribution of € 4.725 million from the Government of Germany to support African countries build their resilience to the negative impacts of climate change and transition to sustainable low-carbon growth.
ACCF was converted to a Multi-donor Trust fund in 2017 with contributions from the Governments of Flanders, Belgium and Italy. The Global Affairs Canada and the Government of Quebec joined the Fund in 2020 and the Global Center on Adaptation in 2022.
The current trust size is USD $25.71 million.
In 2022, the Board of Directors of the African Development Bank and the ACCF donors approved an amendment to the scope of the Fund to align with the Bank Trust fund Policy 2021 and support the increased ambition of African countries expressed in the Glasgow Climate Pact and the ongoing negotiations under the Paris Agreement and the Conventions on Biological Diversity and the Combating Desertification.
The amendments broaden and strengthen the objectives of the Fund, and its beneficiaries. African Governments, non-governmental organizations, local communities, funds, research institutes and regional institutions, and private companies, can now benefit from the Fund’s grants. Grants may be accessed by private sector operators with exemplary projects that are new, semi-commercial and require significant development work.
Since its inception in 2014, the ACCF Governing Committees have approved 26 grant projects for a total of USD $15.89 million. The Fund has completed 7 projects and 1 project cancelled. These approved projects are supporting over 26 African countries via country and multinational projects to strengthen their capacities to access international climate finance, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) revisions, Long Term Strategies development, and implementation of small-scale adaptation projects to enhance their resilience to the impacts of climate change.
It would be recalled only recently the United Kingdom (UK) announced the launch of its programme, Propcom+, supporting climate and growth by addressing environmental, social, and economic challenges in Nigeria’s food and land-use system.
The announcement made by the UK’s Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly earmarked £55 million as contract sum and £2.89m in grants as part of the £95m Propcom+ eight-year UK International Climate Finance programme aimed at supporting climate-resilient and sustainable agriculture and forestry that benefits people, climate, and nature.
The programme aims to support more than four million people, 50% of whom will be women, to adopt and scale sustainable agricultural practices that increase productivity and climate resilience while reducing emissions and protecting natural ecosystems.
“Propcom+ builds on the UK Government’s investment in agriculture through the Propcom Mai-karfi programme which ended in March 2022 after supporting over 1.25 million persons with improved incomes through key market reforms and policies that benefitted poor women and men in Northern Nigeria,” the statement said.
Through these strategies, market actors would be empowered to increase the productivity of smallholder farmers, improve nutrition and food security, enhance climate resilience, pursue lower emissions, and protect and restore nature, while also tackling some of Nigeria’s underlying drivers of conflict and insecurity.”
The new programme, which kicked off May 2023 had initial focal states of Kano, Jigawa, Kaduna, Edo, and Cross River where it will deliver climate-smart agricultural interventions to help the poor and climate vulnerable.
It will also work in some Southern Nigerian states to address issues around deforestation, to foster sustainable land-use management.